Tag Archives: Catherine Hainstock

Interactive Images with ThingLink

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Today’s post comes from regular contributor Catherine Hainstock of Vermont Secondary College.

Cliché: A picture is worth a thousand words.

But wouldn’t it be great if your students could embed those thousand words into the image to demonstrate their understanding or to elaborate on sections of an image? Well now they can.
ThingLink is a simple-to-use website designed to make images more interactive. Originally created for fashion marketing in Europe, it works similar to tagging photos on Facebook or Flickr but goes one step further by allowing the user to embed ‘media-rich tags’ into the image that link back to any web content.

Ulla Engestrom, founder and CEO of ThingLink said:
ThingLink is changing how people engage with photos by transforming them from a static image, into a navigational surface for exploring rich, relevant content that enhances the viewer’s knowledge and experience.

Scroll your mouse over the map of ancient Rome (below) from the ThingLink Gallery and you’ll begin to see the learning/teaching potential of this ‘in-image interaction tool’.

Enhanced images can be embedded into blogs or emailed for people to view. Site registration is free with a limit of 50 images. Once signed up to the site tagging the images is a simple upload, copy and paste process.
Imagine the possibilities for students to create character studies, enhance mapping, curate content, elaborate on mind-maps, or explain a  design or creative processes. It could be a whole new way to annotate or a new platform for interactive storytelling.

Cybersafety Summit 2012

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Today’s post comes from regular contributor Catherine Hainstock of Vermont Secondary College. Catherine tells us about her experiences at the recent National Cybersafety Summit.

On June 12th, I attended the National Cybersafety Summit in Canberra with two students from the school.  They were select members from the Youth Advisory Group (YAG) who took part in online forum discussions to help inform the government on cyber safety initiatives. The purpose of the Summit was to bring students, parents and teachers together with relevant industries and government sectors to discuss “how to keep young Australians safe online”.

The summit was hosted by Project Rockit team members and formally opened by Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Students attended sessions on Managing Your Reputation Online led by Ruby Rose, MTV presenter and spokesperson for HeadSpace. They discussed strategies for protecting their reputations, and the social and legal consequences of harassment, cyberbullying and sexting with the Federal Police. Students  also shared some opinions including the inconsistencies in dealing with bullies at school and that many of the Cybersafety resources used in schools were either not interesting or age-appropriate.

They then attended a session with ABC’s Good Game hosts, Bajo and Hex on Digital Etiquette and Gaming. The culture and nature of gaming was discussed including bullies and online trolls. Teens shared that there is pressure to keep up with obligations to the team in online games. They also said that parents should take more of an interest in what’s going on in their kids’ gaming world.

Adults also attended a  Digital Etiquette and Gaming session. They were surprised to hear that the average age of a gamer was 37 years old. Parental discussion focused on the language and bullying in games. Bajo and Hex urged adults to take interest in their children’s gaming, to keep lines of communication open, set limits and discuss online friendships. Above all the room agreed that it was important to help kids understand that “it’s only a game!” and to not invest too much emotion in it. The adults also attended a presentation by the Alannah and Madeleine Foundation outlining their eSmart Schools program.

The afternoon panel discussion was the highlight for most participants. Some excellent questions and discussion developed:

    • Should teachers and students be friends on Facebook (or other social networks)?
    • Should we stop under 13s from going on Facebook?
    • Should kids be using technology as an emotional outlet?
    • What is the duty of care for teachers in cyberbullying incidents that happen outside of the school?

The show stopper of the day though came from one of my own students. Her question and comment was that not enough was being done to educate young Australians about the mental health consequences of cyberbullying. She wanted to know why we don’t teach people that all the negative online behaviour (and bullying in general) leads to depression, self harm and suicide. She felt the statistics and incidents should not be taboo topics. The entire room fell silent as she spoke.

I think all of us left the summit with much to reflect on and some excellent strategies and directions. I feel privileged to have been a part of the discussion and will be discussing ideas with my Principal for new initiatives.

Thanks to Catherine for sharing her reflection on the event. You can find out more about Catherine’s work on her blog TL Under Construction.

e5 Apps for iPads in a Secondary School

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Today’s guest post comes from Catherine Hainstock of Vermont Secondary College.

The e5 Instructional Model was recently introduced in Victoria and Vermont Secondary College has been trialling it for the past 12 months. We are also on the first phase of a 1:1 iPad program beginning with Year 7 in 2013. As one of the Teacher Librarians I am keen to evaluate and recommend resources of any sort to support quality teaching and learning so last year I began reading blogs about apps for education. I listened to individual recommendations then downloaded and trialled apps but only passed on a handful to specific teachers. I started questioning the quality of educational apps available (most were gimmicks, games or had limited use). Were we expecting too much too soon? I decided to take a different approach.
 
My question became – how could I support teachers to implement the e5 Instructional Model via the iPad Program? Was it possible to find quality apps suitable for each of the facets of e5?
 
As I re-examined e5 and trialled more apps, I had several objectives in mind:
  • to find apps that could be useful across Learning Areas (not always possible)
  • to choose apps that could support both teachers and students
  • to keep costs minimal
  • to check the terms and conditions (especially with regard to age restrictions and ownership of uploaded work)
Here is what I came up with –
 

 

While trialling apps I found that:
  • many suited more than one facet of e5
  • many suitable high quality apps are not listed in the education section of the iTunes Store
  • the apps I found suitable for the Engage facet of e5 tend to be subject specific  so I continue to sample across the learning areas
The e5 app chart is also available as a pdf to download. I’d love to receive comments or constructive feedback and continue the conversation about quality apps for the e5 model.
 

To find out more about Catherine’s work or give her feedback about the app chart, head over to her fantastic blog TL Under Construction.